hot legs

been a long day. was at work at 5:15am, so i'm pretty much done for it.

quick post. i squeezed down between a couple of old cars and the group of guys that went with them. not the best angle, but i wanted the picture. liked the car, liked the club sign. the guitar that was actually a speaker playing some good old tunes was pretty cool.

and then there's that guy's legs. i could crop the picture, but that cuts the sign. i could just photoshop them out, but its late and i'm too tired to bother. maybe some other time. maybe its his car, for all i know. i could have shifted the camera a bit to the right, but then there'd have been the issue of them parked next to the porta-potties, so i took the less offensive angle.

testing testing

took me two hours to drive home yesterday. sure it was friday, but seriously, i leave work at four most every day, and the traffic is just getting worse and worse. wtf. do i just get up at three am so i can try leaving at three in the afternoon??? efffff.

i got home in a not so happy mood. already was tired from not getting enough sleep for three days running. felt like a zombie driving on the freeway, i'm glad i made it home. told my better half, either we get going to a car show, or i'm just gonna lay down for a bit, which would turn into several hours. 

i knew the ruby's show only runs for a couple more fridays, and figured i would skip this one, knowing its the first and last show of the season that really gets a lot of cars anymore. but then i remembered seeing mention of a show out at the broiler, and had to double check on the date. yep, friday evening, same as ruby's only it runs until ten. hosted by the vintage bombs south side, it promised to be just what i was looking for.

pleasantly surprised when we got there, because the last few wednesday night shows i've been to have been so disappointing. while there only seemed to be about twenty cars, they were the right kind for me.

i mentioned before that i had to buy a newer version of my camera a couple of months ago. i've shot so many pictures, mostly of your cars, that the old ones are starting to be unreliable. so i've been mainly using the new one at the few shows i've made it out to. i'm still getting used to it, and it's ok, just not in love with it yet. more buttons and fine tuning required, it's a higher maintenance bitch than the old one.

here's the thing: i hadn't taken it out late, after sunset yet. was't a problem with the old one—got very nice night time shots even in dark corners—but here we arrive at basically a chevy bomb show, sun already set, and i'm not sure i can get the shots i want. so i'm experiementing with the settings.

didn't know my better half had updated the firmware, when i'd only asked him to clean the sensor. so right off the bat, my settings had been reset. wondered what the hell was going on with the first bunch of shots i was taking, then noticed a few things set wrong, and knowing i hadn't left them that way. finally had to go ask him why my camera was tweaking.

there were a few additional settings he found that needed to be changed back, then i got going again. had to reshoot a couple of cars. went to the back lot, where it is much more dark without the lights on and shot over there too. there were a few more in the dark, i really would have liked to take, but there were a lot of guys hanging around behind those cars, and i don't care for the smell of what they might or might not have been smoking. i'm sure there was just a skunk walking by, right?

we packed up about eightish, as neither of us had eaten dinner yet. spoke to a couple of the vintage club guys on the way out. very nice. said they were doing only one more show next friday for halloween, and that was it for the season. costume contests and candy for the kids. said this was a pretty small show because of the dodger game, but they'd been getting more than a hundred cars on other nights. 

we're already talking about just driving straight there from work next week; sorry ruby's—see you in april.

so here's a couple of shots of the same car. one from when we got there, with the screwy settings, and the other from later on. i think they're kind of both ok, but still not quite the same as i could squeeze out of my old camera. guess i'll have to keep trying. 

impala this

i've got so many pictures of cars, sometimes its just hard to pick one. finally settled on an old standby...a '59 impala. just love the curves from the back end of these cars. i can't help it. 

i have shot this same car a lot the past few years at various shows. this was at the unidos show at walnut high school. was hot out. low turn out because of a parts show out at pomona fairgrounds the same day and time. here because one of their guys had sent a flyer to me via my better half, as often happens. i do try to make it to the shows when they go out of their way to get me a flyer.

have really had a crazy couple of weeks work and family wise, so haven't been able to post so much. it's my zen time to take and play with my pictures, and i do miss it when i can't do it. i gotta try and get out to more shows like i used to, but there has just been so little free time lately...

scratcher

i missed a chevy show in tustin for the dia de los muertos show down the street from the house here in whittier. sure i probably could have had a lot more cars to choose from, but probably not many as interesting as the dozen or so that turned up here.

i'd been to the show a couple of years ago, and only the showlows and some arbitrary cars had shown up, and maybe a couple of blocks of vendors. 

this time, several blocks of vendors and food peddlers shutdown the main street and a couple of side streets. we found some cars as we entered the closed off main street and shot those. then i noticed further down, what appeared to be a few more. seems that a new store on the corner, which will be selling t-shirts and other low rider themed accessories, is associated with a car club and some of their cars showed up, as well a few of their friends. 

they had about five cars parked on the street by the store, so we busily got to shooting them. then this puppy, which we'd seen a few nights previously, drove up and dropped down on the corner here. i mean down, scrape the bumper on the street low. heard it loud and clear.

flipping through my collection, i found i've seen it a few times in various places, but only really shot it from the front. wasn't until we passed it uptown that we noticed this funky pinstripe job on the back. who knew you could make praying hands with rosary beads kinda cool. so lemme hear a hallelujah.

found more cars at the other end of the street by the movie theatre and cigar bar, including the usual suspect, whom i am not stalking. at least he'd put a cover back on the spare wheel thing on the back of his chevy, just not the fancy pinstriped one.

on the way home

i won't bore you with vacation pics. good to be home. not looking forward to monday. i've enjoyed a week of sleeping in and not looking forward to waking up at 4 am again.

i did find a car show on our trip, but it kinda sucked donkey balls, so i don't feel like posting any pics yet. there were a few cars to salvage the show, i would otherwise not bother with. there was another show i thought about going to, but it got rained out in the middle of the week, and then on the way home, i decided not to stop at another between there and here. 

ahh, but we did stop briefly at the garden grove elks lodge show, for a shot of the latin gents chevy goodness. parking was hard to come by, as there was another event going on at the lodge. always warmly welcomed by ernie and his wife, we set about taking some shots.

it is difficult to choose which of their cars to show. my better half seemed to really like this one. hard to argue with that. the paint job is great, with a shine to die for. 

true, there were other cars at the show. but i do like to start with my favs.

ernie said he's now not only running their monthly show, but will be in charge of the annual show next august, so there's that to look forward to on the calendar. and we did enjoy the musical selection he was spinning for this show too.

emerald city

way back in april, found this at chicano park. what a great show that was. looking forward to the next one. and i love love love the back end of these impalas.

while i didn't find jesus or ol' blue eyes, i really liked the pinstriping back here.

yay! it's friday. time to look up some car shows. busy week ahead. sorry, latin gents, already know i'm gonna miss your show...

winning

my work days are so long, even the eight hour days. too much work, too little time; you know the saying. i'm on the verge of burning out, so i'll take a long overdue vacay soon.

meanwhile, i get home and then don't feel like going out to car shows i used to enjoy. been only hitting a few here and there on weekends.

i thought about going to the broiler this evening; my better half said he was working late anyway, so why not? about the time i was going to pack stuff up to go, he let me know he was on the way home. so nix that idea.

he got called in to work last night, and said he only got about three hours of sleep, so that's where he is right now, making those zeebers.

this chevy was from a show in montebello. the one i hung around for instead of going to work. this one got the "best bomb" trophy. it was next to a similar one, a 1936, that was equally nice. how they ever decide which cars get trophies i'll never understand, though they did say the kids at the show made a lot of the decisions themselves.

ok, my legs are tired of sitting. too many hours in front of a computer, then driving over an hour home, and sitting in front of a computer for another couple of hours can't be good.

only sometimes

i started out a small show in montebello, with the intention of going to work for a few hours to try and wrangle my deadlines to something slightly more bearable on monday. but no, someone at the show mentioned to me about a show over at legg lake going at that moment.

i dragged my feet. hung out at this show for the raffle [didn't win anything], stayed for the trophies, then left for lunch, still intending to go to work. making it more difficult, was the fact that i was literally eight minutes away from the lake. the lake was next to a freeway onramp, so if it sucked or if i really intended to go to work i could.

well, it was an ok show. loosely coordinated, more of a picnic with a bunch of car clubs. many cars i've seen before, but still took shots of. sort of an assortment of classics and low riders. i shot a few of the low riders, if i liked their paint jobs. i'll show you this one, because one of the guys from the club came over and talked to me and asked for a card.

oh, and after two shows under the hot sun, and it being almost four when i left, i didn't make it to work after all. the freeway also went too close to home, and thought i'd just download my pictures instead. maybe tomorrow.

broadside

been a long week at work, and i'm tired and not sleeping well, so i won't blather tonight. just getting my quick fix before i begin tossing and turning for the night.

i don't usually shoot from the side. probably because at most shows, cars are packed so close together, and too many people are milling about, i just can't get the shot. here at the show in la puente, early, i did shoot several, since cars were loosely parked together.

owner of this one, i think had met me before, but asked for a card anyway. can't remember what that red thing reflected on the side was, but it vaguely looks like a bow.

persistance

second show from sunday, out in la puente. hot there, few clouds. decent size parking lot cordoned off for what was hopefully a good show. i got there around start time, maybe a little early. there were already vendors set up, and some cars, a couple of clubs, with my favorite old cars.

this chevy was out in the middle by itself, so i took advantage of the situation. in the midst of different angles, the owner came over and introduced himself. said he'd met my better half the previous weekend at the bomb club show, which i missed. said he'd been given a card, had checked out both of our websites, said he'd sent an email, and was wondering about the pictures my better half might have taken and possibly promised to share with him.

well, i told him, thanks for his interest. if i receive an unexpected email, i mostly assume they talked to my better half and forward them over. he's been quite busy, and if he said he'd send pics, he will when he gets time to do it. i think the guy heard me over the speaker system playing loud music.

anyway, i kept on taking pictures. he came back over later, and said, "gonzalez?" he was remembering my name from my card, then rattled off my better half's website, and was just getting half of mine off the tip of his tongue. yes, he really had checked out our sites.

well, if you own this car, i liked this shot, and hello. my better half will have to sift through about a thousand shots from that day to see if he has your car there, so please be patient.

also, one of the volunteer security guys thought it was his car. showed me a picture of what he said was his car, same make, model and color, that he'd left at home. said he was kind of freaking that someone had stolen and brought it to the show.